It’s quickly becoming apparent that my largest challenge as a novice programmer is going to be implementing some fun to play against AI in this game.

The game mechanics are in place, and I thought that was going to be the hard part…

nope.

The amount of “if” statements required to make a single enemy simply move toward the player, know when to attack, and how to navigate a very basic environment is astounding.

I’ve gained a whole new respect for any game dev who has programmed halfway decent AI.

Game Maker Language is heavily based on C++, for anyone who is interested. My background stems from a few courses over 12 years ago in High School, and self teaching from there.

Game Maker requires the user to program everything - collisions with the ground, gravity, not running through walls, etc.

It also offers no “built in” AI of any sort. Any creature you put in your game is run by hundreds of lines of code, and let me tell you this - they don’t like to cooperate.

So far I’ve managed to make my little goblin guy chase the player around, jump attack and regular-attack at him, and climb the cliffs in the terrain. Not a bad accomplishment.

What about jumping over pits? What about running away if he’s losing?

What about my sanityyyyyyy?

No. You know what? I’m having a blast with this!